It's a wrap!

There's one big advantage to my husband being away in Spain overnight (lucky dog!) is that I can sit and stitch all evening without someone distracting me.

I must say I did have a quick smile when he phoned in to gloriously hot sunny Taunton from wet and miserable Madrid! He's been several times and has yet to see Spain's capital city in dry weather - tough old life eh?

So I stitched away and finished the binding on my Spring Fling - now it's ready to post to the last person on my list.

I even had time to finish the centre of my Another Little Quilt Swap quilt - now it's ready for borders

Sarah had her first written GCSE exam in Religious Studies yesterday and she thinks it went okay - one down, thirteen to go! Roll on 20th June and her final paper in Physics.

Louise has been busy all week with Key Stage 2 SATs exams but seems to be taking them all in her stride.

Nick has been revelling in the glorious weather we've been having - dashing home from school and getting changed on the hoof to dash out and play football with all his mates - aren't summer evenings just the business. Mind you the South West is wet and dreary this morning (that'll teach me for laughing at Nigel) - still at least I won't have to water the garden tonight - every cloud has a silver lining :o)

I have to make the May BQL bag before the end of the month and so that may well be the next thing on the horizon, plus both Nigel's parents and my parents have their Golden Wedding Anniversaries over the next two months and I thought I might make them each something.

Who would believe that the two sets of parents were married exactly four weeks apart, Nigel's parents have two sons and a daughter, my parents have two daughters and a son. Nigel and I were both born in 1960. Our next siblings, his brother and my sister were born in 1963 and finally our youngest siblings, his sister and my brother were born in 1969. Spooky eh?

I have seen a design for a cushion with an iris on done in stained glass applique using gold bias as the 'lead'. I'd quite like to do something like that - after all when you get to your 70's you really do have most things.

Work on the Spring Fling proceeds and sign up for Summer

Summer has arrived!

Yippee I hear you all say - and the weather here in Taunton is certainly hot and sunny

But I don't mean the weather

The Summer round of the Four Seasons Quilt Swap has opened for registration - I've already emailed Margaret with my details. After all I have Autumn, Winter and Spring quilts - I wouldn't want to miss out on having a complete set would I?

I also spent a fair bit of yesterday working on the Spring Fling Round Robin I've been sent to quilt and complete.

Being as deeply entrenched in a hearts phase as I seem to be at present I couldn't resist quilting the odd heart or two - well the triangle shaped pieces cried out for them really

And then lots more leaves to echo Kate's appliqued ones

Finally Kate had passed on a piece of the brown stripe you see along the edges of the label with the very sensible suggestion that it would make an excellent binding.

I totally agreed. However I really am not comfortable with doing straight bindings and always go for bias myself. As there wasn't sufficient of the stripe to run with this method I decided to use some of the brown, pink and green flowered I received in a swap for one of the heart quilts instead. I think it picks up the elements in the quilt quite well

This has been an odd experience for me - quilting someone else's work. I know a lot of you ladies with longarm machines do it for a living, but it was a first for me and felt rather strange.

Not an unpleasant experience though, just different and I'd happily repeat it if another chance came along

Rugby and back to stitching

The pink and the yellow shorts got an outing over the weekend

The girls had a fabulous time

Due to the vagaries of some fairly suspect refereeing by mostly novice referees they were robbed and finally came in 6th of twelve in the overall tournament as runners-up for the plate which is the trophy for the middle group of four. Without wishing to sound like a case of sour grapes one does wonder if the place for new referees to cut their teeth is in the biggest tournament in the English girls rugby calendar. Sadly maybe it's a damning indictment of the way the rugby fraternity views the female game that they couldn't get referees of a higher level of skill and experience - but hey-ho!

I shan't bore you with the nitty gritty - this is meant to be mainly a quilting blog not a rugby one - so I'm not going to go into detail but the girls felt that, because of some very questionable judgement on the part of most of the refs, they were beaten both in the first pool game (making them second in their pool) and subsequently in their section final by two much lesser teams which meant lots of frustrated tears as they left the pitch after the last game. However in true rugby fashion and style they showed dignity and good sportmanship to the end.

Here they are - a slightly less than conventional team photo just after finishing their last match complete with coaches and managers with their battle cry 'Where's the beach?' - no idea where that came from except the three counties which the region covers have some of the best holiday beaches in the UK. It obviously has some significance to the girls. Sarah's at the back of the girls just to the right of the coach in the pale top.

Here's one of Sarah with her two Somerset team mates after receiving their medals - completely mad! Note the afore-mentioned pink shorts and the 'Where's the beach?' pose again - sorry you just had to be there!

Here is the coach with his yellow shorts on - nuff said!

An action shot of Sarah flanking on the side of the scrum

And one of her poaching the ball from the scrum and heading off on the blind side to be tackled by the one opposition player aware of what she was trying to do. The game is certainly not without risk - Sarah took a boot to the nose in a ruck (probably accidental) just after this and had to come off as a blood injury and then a deliberate boot to the cheekbone in the final game which was completely missed by the ref - fortunately she's only got a good bruise on her cheek and a very tender nose but no broken bones. Because of the wonderful hot weather we've had this past week or so the ground was rock hard and there were several knock-outs and cases of concussion for the medics to tend throughout the day - thankfully none of them were our girls.

For any rugby fans out there ignore the fact that she was wearing the no 5 shirt - they were numbered so the RFU talent spotters would be able to identify them to go through for specialist training and development over the summer. Our team manager had naively listed the girls in alphabetical order rather than by their playing position numbers which really made for a few laughs as some of the bulky forwards were poured into the slimfit backs' shirts and the backs drowned in the forwards' tents!

The girls very nearly didn't make it to the tournament - well at least not on time anyway - as three of them got stuck in the hotel lift and had to be rescued by the fire brigade - this is Sarah with four of her team mates acting the goat in front of the appliance - lots of high spirits

And more serious horseplay at the end - one has to empty the water bottles of course - especially if it's over the coaches! He was obviously expecting it as he gave me temporary custody of his mobile phone to avoid it getting soaked prior to this.

Now onto more fabric orientated things

I decided, as the weather here in Taunton is absolutely beautiful, to do some open-air shots for these

This selection of lovely fabrics with a woven pattern came a little while ago from Cathi - from Sweden via Ireland - beautiful, thank you Cathi

This little pink heart quilt next to the clematis is a swap to go out soon - just awaiting buttons and hangers

And here's my final part of the Spring Fling Round Robin passed onto me from Kate and now sandwiched ready for quilting

Yet more hearts - this time for the 'Another Little Quilt Swap' - the recipient is less than partial to country/muddy fabrics like Thimbleberries - I think this is about as far away from that as you can get. The quilt needs to be a little bigger than all the other heart ones I've done so this is 5 rows of 5

Lastly we have a new camera - hence all the great rugby pictures, I wasn't going to bore you with the other 374! - this one will happily travel away from home

So here's a little bit of late Spring I took when trying out the macro-setting - back to glorious yellow again :o)

Shorts to dye for!!!

Big weekend this weekend in the girls' rugby calendar.


It's the National Regional Festival at Lichfield RFC in Staffordshire

The U15s play on Saturday and Sarah's age group the U18s play on Sunday

From our club Sarah will be the only girl there in either age group and the squad for her region of SouthWestSouth is drawn from the counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall - the West Country, the bottom left hand corner of England

Squads of 22 girls from each of I think 11 or 12 regions will battle it out in pool games and then knock-out games throughout the day to decide which region will become national champions this year. To be honest the squad isn't looking that strong (with the exception of my daughter of course - biased mother talking here) so we don't expect to get placed but it will be a great day and it is a real achievement to make the squad in the first place

Sarah was a member of the squad four seasons ago at the lower age group who were the inaugural champions when the competition first started so she has previous experience.

As you can imagine we're all going up there to support her

Sadly for the two younger ones they're missing a scout camp this weekend because of it but sometimes something just has to give - we can't be in two places at the same time and there will be lots of other scout camps

One of Sarah's coaches is a youngish teacher from Somerset who has a very sweet behind, especially in rugby shorts (sorry if this is making you blush, but one can always look). He often wears a pair of particularly noticeable bright yellow shorts which show his assets to their full advantage and the whole squad of 15 to 18 year olds delight in teasing him about it - not to mention the mothers :o) I think he loves the banter in an embarrassing sort of way

So when we spied a couple of pairs of white rugby shorts in the sale a few weeks ago we thought what fun it would be to dye them for Sarah to wear them all in the interests of winding him up of course!

Hence the bright YELLOW! and PINK! specimens you see before you

Of course I couldn't possibly allow just one little pair of shorts to venture unaccompanied into the washing machine - I'm not that cruel

So here's the rest of the yellow dye lot - the interesting brown/toffee colour on the left was originally part of a lilac cotton charity shop sheet - not quite so attractive is its mottled cousin on the right mixing the brown with the purple - I think that may be a candidate for the next black session

And here's the rest of the pink dye lot - it's always fun to overdye other fabrics - but I can't believe I'm showing you this lot mostly un-ironed - what a scruffy individual I am. My excuse is that Nigel's need was greater than mine last night as he'd run out of work shirts - oh dear, the obstacles that stand in the way of my art!

Mind you I have been a little bit busy on the stitching front

I did a big post office visit yesterday to send off another Lucy Locket Mini Quilt, two heart quilts for blogging friends who need a lift, another heart quilt I promised in exchange for fabric and of course the replacement Spring Fling Round Robin - pleeeease Mr Postman can you make extra sure that this version gets to its rightful recipient - I really don't fancy making another one!

I was also very taken with a little mini quilt that Lucy in the Netherlands had made for Libby

So much so I had a bit of a go myself

My little red squares are half an inch so I don't think it's quite as teeny tiny as Lucy's version, plus I got bored after 12 little nine patch blocks so it's only 3 x 4 instead of 4 x 5, but I'm very taken with it and it joins the churn dash in the 'waiting for sandwiching' pile along with several heart quilts.

Some of the next heart quilts don't actually have homes to go to and a few people have suggested opening an etsy shop to sell them - the jury's still out on that one

Hearts and flowers

The May Day bank holiday weekend over here in the UK was for once not a damp squib - the sun shone and temperatures rose to 'take your coat off' levels - very pleasant. Time enough for a walk in the countryside, some gardening and a bit of stitching too

I slipped in under the wire with my April BQL Bag Challenge bag - just! At 9.30pm on the Saturday evening I made the extended deadline with a couple of hours to spare - phew!

The May bag isn't as large but involves making 24 bow tie blocks so there's no way I dare leave this one until the very last minute - just have to decide on some fabrics and get started on that one then

I put the final stitches in the replacement Spring Fling Round Robin last night - that will be sent off to sunny Portugal either today or tomorrow.

I didn't have any of the original fabric I used for the leaves left so to avoid rummaging through my fabric boxes in the loft I used an I Spy square sent to me I think by Karol-Ann. The background was just the right green for the leaves - but boy was I cutting it a bit fine in between all those animals :o)

And finally five more little heart quilts completed - all except the lilac and sand one at the top right have homes - so they'll be heading off to the post office pretty sharpish too

Still got one more heart top completed on the sand background plus three on the black backgrounds now ready for sandwiching and two others with pre-determined destinations in the planning stages to start but I can feel an end to the heart phase starting to appear on the horizon

So apart from my May bag, I wonder what I should have a go at next?

Another little heart finish

I have managed to do a bit of stitching this week but it's had to slot in amongst lots of other things - what's new there then I hear you say - most especially the Presentation Evening for Sarah's rugby team

As managers we were expected to give a speech so I was delegated to write and deliver it - that took up precious stitching time

Here's my girlie in the red top with one of her medals for representing her county and she received another for representing the region

And here are the beautiful flowers I received for the hard work put in this year - nice to be shown a little appreciation now and then.

Back onto hearts again

Karol-Ann asked if she could have one of the heart quilts for some dear friends who will be married at the end of the month

This is the one she selected - now completed and ready to post - should be with you in a few days Karol-Ann, hope you like it

And this is the back where I've embroidered the pertinent details

Hope their day is lovely for them

A little case of Deja Vu!

Sorry ladies - for those of you who also check up on the Spring Fling Round Robin blog this will be a double case of deja vu as I inadvertently posted this little lot onto that blog by mistake - duh - too big a hurry, too many things to do at once!!! Maybe I should just stick to trying to do one thing properly at once :o)))

Remember this little number from March

My second round for the Spring Fling Round Robin

Sadly it would appear that it has gone to the great quilting bee in the sky - courtesy of the postal service either here in the UK or across the Channel in its recipient's country

So I volunteered to try and recreate it as closely as I could

I know my stash is ridiculously bulging but I'm afraid I haven't got the exact match for the fabrics Jeanette used for the centre.

However I did have some in similar colours.

Here's the new centre - hope it's close enough Jeanette - I'm afraid the green spots had to make way for stripes instead as my only polka dot green needs the viewer to wear sunglasses - not the right colour family at all. I have tried to replicate the pattern as best I can - the purple star points were foundation pieced - I didn't trust myself to do them any other way especially without the original pattern

Then the offset border - again I'd used up or sent on all the cream with gold spots I used last time so this is the best I could come up with

Finally I'm stitching the applique on - my purple is also tone on tone but with lighter details rather than Jeanette's fabric which had a darker self coloured pattern. I think the replacement will give the same general impression even if it's not a complete carbon copy.

Thank goodness I took photos for the blog or else I wouldn't have been able to remember the original or the accompanying label which I will also try to replicate as well as I'm able

Then, once I've completed the applique - hopefully this evening - it's back to finishing of all those hearts I guess...........